Epeolatry Book Review: The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter
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Title: The Crimson Road
Author: A.G. Slatter
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Publisher: Titan Books
Publication date: 11th February, 2025
Synopsis: A captivating dark gothic fantasy set in the same universe as the award-winning author’s All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead. A tale of vampires, assassins, ancient witches and broken promises. By turns gripping and bewitching, sharp and audacious, this mesmerising story takes you on a journey into the dark heart of Slatter’s sinister and compelling fantasy world.
It would be trite to say that Angela Slatter needs no introduction, and for single-minded horror aficionados, it also might not be entirely true. With apologies to those who do know, she is a World Fantasy Award winner and a British Fantasy Award winner, as well as recipient of the 2022 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Additionally, her novel The Path of Thorns won the Australian Shadows Award for Best Novel. The author herself has described her main body of mature work as “gothic fantasy with horror elements” and it’s very much rooted in folk and fairy tales. That sums up the mood and the setting neatly, but I doubt any original Gothic writer would have managed such a pacy narrative, or such engaging characters.
The story begins with a parricide, a bereavement and a funeral in the first few pages, and it only gets busier from there. Violet Zennor, protagonist in this very lightly sketched steampunk? dark fantasy? world, is the freshly bereaved daughter of a loathed, obsessive father, who has trained her from childhood to be a living weapon in pursuit of a mission to track down her lost brother and undo the devil’s bargain that laid the foundation of the family fortunes. As an unwanted legacy, it’s suitably crackpot, yet fated and unavoidable. Her chance to finally get out from under her father’s bizarre fixation turns out to be anything but, and she sets out on her destined journey to the north, pursued by assassins who aren’t about to let the matter drop. Along the way, we get introduced to other characters such as the absolutely-unwicked stepmother, the vagabond waif Freddie, the dubious suitor Jack Seven-Gates, and ultimately, the heroine’s lost brother… or is he?
I won’t be giving too much away by hinting that the plot concerns vampires, as the author has said as much elsewhere, but there are no swooning maidens or cloaked wooers here; the term for bloodsuckers in the book, the Leech Lords, pretty much encapsulates what they are in this conception, with strong sociological and even political dimension. The setting is more or less the same as Slatter’s previous bestsellers, All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, and The Briar Book of the Dead, but there’s a merciful absence of heavy-handed worldbuilding and datadumps (well, grimoire-dumps, given the setting, but anyway…) Readers new to the cycle could easily read and enjoy The Crimson Road without having dipped into the other books at all. The vaguely fantastical folklorish panoply of denizens and occult tropes decorate and add atmosphere to the story without obstructing it at all; you could reframe it in any number of eras or genres, and it would still work. Hence, horror purists are unlikely to be disappointed, while others will simply be having a damn good time.
Yes, we’re dealing with a heroic journey to a dark land, but I don’t believe that the likes of Aragon or even Frodo would contemplate stopping on their odyssey to have a good cry. That’s part of the book’s charm and its eminently believable characters. The various threads in the story all come together in the end, and threads do play a key role in the denouement. Slatter has said that this whole tale sprang out of her obsession with the word “anchorhold”, and that ought to be enough to tease you into the narrative. Plus, if you have a kickass heroine trained from childhood in the fighting arts, pursued by assassins, on a world-saving mission to the heart of an evil darkness, seasoned with lashings of family drama, how can you really go wrong? Cracking entertainment that runs on rails.
/5
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Paul StJohn Mackintosh is a Scottish author, poet, journalist, historian, games writer, and media professional. Born in 1961, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, has lived and worked in Asia and Central Europe, and currently lives in France.
Paul’s first collection of short stories, Black Propaganda, appeared from H. Harksen Productions in 2016. His second story collection, The Echo of The Sea & other Strange War Stories, was published by Egaeus Press in 2017. His short novel The Three Books was published by Black Shuck Books in 2018. His short story “The People of the Island,” in Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales, from H. Harksen Productions, received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her Best Horror of the Year Volume Two list for 2009 and his story “The First Circus of the New Year” received the same in 2016. His historical novel Begin the Beguine and his semi-autobiographical novel Death of a Doppelgänger were both published in 2023. He has written several books of French wartime history. His latest horror work is his apocalyptic novel Theogasm (2024).
Paul’s acclaimed first poetry collection, The Golden Age, was published by Bellew Publishing in 1997, and reissued on Kindle in 2013. His second poetry collection, The Musical Box of Wonders, was published by H. Harksen Productions in 2011. His sonnet cycle The Great Arcana: Sonnets for the 22 Trumps of the Tarot, and his ballad cycle Black Ballads, based on traditional Scottish myths and legends, were both published in 2022.
Paul’s Lovecraftian and dark fiction, and criticism, has appeared in numerous formats and journals worldwide, including Occult Detective Magazine, Weirdbook, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, the Financial Times, the UK Independent, the Times Literary Supplement, Arts of Asia, Strange Horizons, A Broad Scot, and elsewhere. His co-translations from the Japanese, done with Maki Sugiyama, include The Poems of Nakahara Chuya (1993) and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (1995) by the 1994 Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe, which won a Japan Festival Award. He also co-translated Superstrings (2007) by Dinu Flamand from Romanian with Olga Dunca. Paul is a former Executive Committee member of the Translators Association of the Society of Authors of Great Britain. He was rated #1 of “The 12 Publishing Shakers You Should Be Following” by The Independent Publishing Magazine. He is also the official clan poet of Clan Mackintosh.
